Learn All About SEO

SEO is short for search engine optimization. It’s the process of making your website and all the content on your website FRIENDLY for search engines. After all, wouldn’t it be nice if Google sent you hundreds or even thousands of daily visitors for FREE? That is the ultimate goal of a quality, SEO friendly website. Search engine optimization takes months, often years, to accomplish on all levels. There are some basics to start with like page titles, site layout and structure, meta tags, keyword rich content, H1 tags with the proper keyword(s), and social media accounts with Facebook and Twitter. SEO is often broken down into on-page SEO and 0ff-page SEO. On-page SEO is perhaps the easiest for small business owners to understand as it relates to their website and the content that is on it. Off-page SEO is a touch more difficult to comprehend for most. It incorporates things like backlinks to your website and behind the scenes coding for your website. Things that search engines need to see in order to prepare how they rank your website for certain keywords. Ideally you come up #1 on Google when searching for your website name (or company name). If you don’t show up at all when searching for your company, something is seriously wrong. The basics of SEO are fairly simple once you understand how and where you can change them. Don’t ignore your websites SEO strategy as I guarantee you your competitors are not ignoring theirs. We help small businesses figure our how they can improve on their SEO practices by running an audit on their site. We give them a detailed report of where and how they can improve and work on their SEO.

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

Many of our clients get SEO and search engine marketing confused or treat them the same. Keep in mind that SEO (search engine optimization) and search engine marketing are two different concepts. Both have to do with search engines and your website, but they pertain to different areas that you’ll need to focus on. Search engine marketing relates to advertising within search engine results pages. For instance, you might want to place an ad on Google every time someone searches for the word ‘Gold’. There are a few ways to do this. One is to use Google Adwords to place PPC (Price per click) or CPC (cost per click) ads within the search results for ‘gold’. Instead of hoping your website shows up in the results section, you take action and pay for it to be one of the ads that is shown. Your ad shows for FREE, but if someone clicks on it, you pay a fee to Google since they are sending web traffic to your website. Adwords can get expensive and it is fairly complicated beyond the basics. Our advice is to take it slow and set daily spending limits so that you don’t get carried away at first. You can also try advertising with banner ads throughout the Internet. Those ads are typically sold on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis. You might pay $20 for 1000 impressions. Search engine marketing is not to be taken lightly, but something that all business should consider as part of their online marketing plan.

What Is Keyword Analysis?

Keyword analysis is researching search terms related to your websites content. Google offers a tool where you can look up keywords based on search volume and see which words are typically searched for together. Determining which sets of keywords are the best option for you website is critical to your SEO success. You need to write your page content with keyword rich phrases and make sure that page tiles and title tags are setup properly. Keyword analysis provides you with the data that is necessary to create a successful SEO campaign for your website.

How do I get to the top of Google?

Getting to the top of the organic search results in Google is not an easy task. No SEO or web design company should make any promises as to getting your website listed at or near the top. If it were that easy everyone would be in the Top 10. SEO takes months, often years, to fully establish a website as a proven and trusted resource on the Internet. Google has a complicated algorithm that tracks hundreds of factors when determining which websites get to appear near the top of their search results. Some companies give up on search engine optimization and pay to be in the Google Adwords advertising program. If you advertise on Adwords, you can pay on a cost per click basis to get your ad listed above or to the side of the organic search results for certain keyword terms that you choose. Google is constantly updating and changing their algorithm so even if you appear in their Top 10 results one day, you could be gone the next. There are no guarantees. We suggest that our clients do all that is within their capability to prepare their website to be SEO friendly so that there is a chance to improve their overall search results rankings.

How do I get people to notice my website?

Getting people to find or notice your website online is not that difficult if you follow some of the proven Internet marketing techniques. First, you will want a modern, responsive website that is SEO friendly and has several social media accounts openly available to the public. The more fingers of your company that stretch out on the Internet, the better chance someone will notice you. You can also advertise on search engines like Google or Bing and reach your audience by paying for it. Facebook accepts ads too, and that is another avenue to consider. We suggest that you save advertising as a last resort to find new visitors to your website. Exhaust all other resources wherein you can acquire website traffic for free. Search engines handle billions and billions of web searches each month, the key is to get your website listed for some of those results. FREE traffic is the preferred way to get your website noticed. Make sure that your website is ready for visitors and potential customers by having landing pages that ‘call to action’ your users. If you are going to take the time to get users, then you might as well be prepared to sell them your products or services. Lastly, we suggest going out to other websites and trying to get them to link to your website (called a backlink). Having multiple ways to get website traffic is critical to your business success online.

How do I know if my Search Engine Optimization Strategy is working?

The great thing about the Internet and websites in general is that you have a ton of data that you can draw upon to prove if your online marketing strategies are actually working. SEO is no different. By using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools software (installed on your webpages), you can track nearly everything on your website from clicks, to forms being filled out, to product sales. Search engine optimization is one area that we help small businesses with. We go in and show them how to use their Google tools to see how their website is doing for certain keywords. You can quickly and easily see which keywords are doing better or worse and focus your SEO resources on improving them from month to month. The best idea is to pick 5 to 10 keyword phrases to track. Implement your SEO strategy for those keywords and then come back in a month or 2 and see if you have improved the position that you come up for those keywords in the Google search results. Each spot that you move up means a much better chance of getting search traffic sent to your website for FREE. SEO is neither an art or a science. It’s somewhere in between. Having an SEO friendly website and content will surely help your chances of success when it comes to search engine results.

Why does my small business need social media?

When Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp first became popular, small businesses were hesitant to put too much stock in them. Just how social would the world wide web become they thought. Well, it turns out that social media plays a much larger part than any of us could have imagined. That old idea of ‘word of mouth’ can make or break a business is coming true online just like it does for brick and mortar stores. You need to keep up a solid reputation online amongst all the review websites. Websites like Facebook and Twitter at least allow you to control some of what is being said about your brand or company. Establishing social media accounts early is a great idea for your website/company. Interact with your customers through Facebook. Respond to concerns or questions on Yelp. Take charge of your social presence online. We help our clients establish Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts so that they can be active online beyond their traditional website. Social media, if used properly, can really deliver when it comes to product sales and positive comments on things like services.

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